Tampa / St. Pete Comps for water

[Walter Pape]

Hello BP, I am looking at property that is on a canal that leads to the Bay. I cant find anything sold or active to compare it to. How much do you add when comping properties on water compared to those on land? I get that Im comparing tangerines to oranges... But hey, Im making some juice!! 

Thanks for the help

[Dave Bingham]

@Walter Pape 

Yeah, that is an accurate summary. I don't look at a picture of the property initially though. I just find ones that match my intangible within a mile or so. 

This particular one was easy. I just looked at the map and got the addresses from Google by following the canal east and northwest.

I then input the addresses into the county records searching for recently sold. This is what takes the longest. Sometimes the county site will have a button that says similar sales. If you're really lucky they actually will be comparable with the subject property and very close. These make great supplemental comps and may end of being what you use if the others you picked out visually bust out.

After I have my list I try to make sure they have the same bedroom count, within 10% of the sf^2 and within 5 years of age of the subject. 

I put your comps and those that are for sale around them in realtor.com or zillow's pictures to get a better handle on qualitative differences such as floor type, countertop type, appliance quality, etc...

Once you identify what's different you can then see what a particular difference translates into in the form of a raw dollar amount. To determine this you don't even need to include your subject or even your comps as you're only quantifying what dollar value a particular feature brings in that market.

Once you have that all done simply make your adjustments and as long as you did everything objectively as possible with the data supporting it you got a great starting place to determine your subject's value.

It can take up to 2 hours to do this but it gets easier and sometimes the appraiser/assessor offices online is just stellar and really reduces how much time is needed. It's onerous but if it will keep you from making a $10,000 mistake I'd say it's worth it. Good luck and see you the 28th!